Vintage miscellany, November 1971

Champagne Trophy.—The latest sponsors of Historic car races are Charles Heidsieck Champagne, who put the Charles Heidsieck Challenge Trophy for a race at the AMOC Crystal Palace Meeting in September, Mon. and Mme. Jean Marc Heidsieck flying over from Paris to present it. The enthusiastic Morris Register had a long article on Morris GPO vans in the Summer edition of its journal and there is a neat summary of sports Austin Sevens in the current issue of the excellent Magazine of the Austin Seven Clubs’ Association, together with proposals for celebrating next year’s Austin Jubilee. The Reg. No. of the Rolls-Royce which got Ivor Novello a prison sentence during the war for misuse of petrol, according to an article in The Sunday Express, was BLX 478. He used it for driving between London and Littlewick Green.

Misled by a Christie’s hand-out, we referred to the 1910 Type XI Bleriot monoplane which came up at an auction of theirs recently as the only aeroplane of its type in flying order. A reader informs us that a similar machine is flown by the Shuttleworth Trust at their Open Days. The Christie Bleriot apparently failed to reach its reserve price of £20,000. Last month we referred to a Humber with headlamps flared into its mudguards which was in Dunlop’s test fleet in the nineteen-twenties. The Humber Register Historian has taken us to task, and, having looked again at the photograph we were referring to, we are of the opinion that this was a big I.h.d. American two-seater, perhaps a Pierce-Arrow? A 1927 Dodge Brothers saloon is said to be available on the Isle of Anguilla. We learn with deep regret of the death of Sydney Guy, last September, at the age of 86, fourteen years after his retirement from running Guy Motors Ltd. of Wolverhampton.

Odds and Ends.—The August edition of the HCVC contained a useful history of Chevrolet/Bedford commercial vehicles. The STD Register asks us to make it clear that the 24/70 Sunbeam sports-tourer which took part in the Silverstone Parade of Sunbeam, Talbot and Darracq vehicles last July was entered by Roger Gates and not by V. Crabbe, as the programme, and therefore our caption, stated. A. B. Demaus, of Cadmore Close, St. Michael’s, Tenbury, Worcs., whom one associates with vintage Humbers, hopes to form a register of Hillman Aero Minx cars, if sufficient owners contact him. An open-bodied Type 46 Bugatti has returned to this country from Kenya.

The September issue of Multicylinder, the journal of the Pre-50 American AC, reports a successful Dyrham Park Rally held on the Summer Bank Holiday; 2,400 spectators’ cars attended and £1,174 was taken at the gate. Premier award, the Perry Concours Challenge Trophy, was won by S. Cook’s 1926 Ford tourer. There were classes such as Prohibition (1921-24), Roosevelt (1935-42), etc., and other award winners included R. Perry’s 1926 Buick, S. Mirabiles’ 1937 Buick 40, T. Whittaker’s 1927 Chrysler 72 and C. Russett’s 1915 Selden lorry. A straight-8 Bugatti and Fiat Topolino were seen by a 15-year-old reader at a garage near Orleans in France. An Austro-Daimler tourer, probably an ADR, is reported on a dockside in Jugoslavia, possibly derelict. HM The Queen has entered her 1900 Daimler for the Brighton Run on November 7th. It will be driven by G. E. Mawer.